


What Is The Mystery Shack?

by Prehensilizing



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mystery Shack, Sad, Stangst, one-sided, post-portal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 18:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16979709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prehensilizing/pseuds/Prehensilizing
Summary: The Mystery Shack had to start somewhere.(A short drabble on how Ford's house became Stan's home after the portal incident. Unfinished. Might continue, might not.)





	What Is The Mystery Shack?

            At first, it’s just big things.

            Hide the evidence.

            Ditch the crossbow - you’re not a violent guy.

            Dump liquor down the drain. You can’t afford distractions.

            Cover the bloodstained living room floor with a rug. _Two_ rugs.

            (Don’t ask why there’s blood on the floor to begin with.)

            Don’t go in Ford’s room.

            Whatever you do, do _not_ go in Ford’s room.

            Stanley sighed, listening to the rain patter on the stained glass windowpanes, weirdly intricate for his brother’s practical sensibilities. Why did Ford even have stained glass? It was a luxury, something Stan only knew to exist in the upper echelons of society – churches had stained glass. _Mansions_ had stained glass. What was it doing here, in his brother’s house?

            It was just a house.

            He couldn’t call it Ford’s home. It was hard calling any place home, except, well, _home._ Home was in New Jersey, on a beach with his brother in the sunshine. Home was aboard the Stan o’ War, sailing off with Ford into the unknowable sunset. Home was embarking upon an adventure, comforted in the knowledge that your brother was there for you – would _always_ be there for you.

            Not this dump.

            He groaned, rolling onto his side. The couch was made entirely of lumps. He hadn’t slept in days, and it didn’t look like he was going to start again anytime soon. He sat up, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

            At least it was warmer than the car. Think positive.

            Then again, lots of places were warmer than the car. Like New Mexico. Or _Old_ Mexico, he thought, not for the first time. Were any of the fake licenses he’d collected over the years still valid? Could he cross _any_ borders without being detained?

            He huffed a raw chuckle. His brother might be dead or worse, and here he was worrying about whether his fake license was valid. Yeesh.

            “What am I doing here?” he asked himself, out loud. His voice reverberated against the bare wooden walls, louder than he’d anticipated.

            This house was so empty.

            “Stanford,” he whispered.

 

* * *

            

            It got easier – but not much.

            The house was quiet. Despite the Murder Hut traffic, the house was a graveyard at night. The walls were paper thin, and even the smallest noise was audible: owls cooing, bats flapping, twigs snapping, and who knows what else? It gave Stan the heebie-jeebies.

            He tried everything. White noise, fans, music – nothing helped.

            Empty Pitt Cola cans lined the carpet beside the couch. He quit drinking, cold turkey. He told himself it was a good thing. Can’t be too careful. He ached for the twelve-hour respite that drinking brought, and missed it. His nails grew, and tiny scabs formed on the palms of his hands from the constant clenching and unclenching of his fists.

            He had the willpower of an angry god.

            He would finish what his brother had been unable to start.

            Stanley would _make_ this house Ford’s home.

 

* * *

 

            Stanley was an old man at thirty-five.

            His back ached, the consequence of sleeping on the couch an entire year before compromising and finally moving into the upstairs bedroom. (Do _not_ go in Ford’s room.) Four years later, his spine still popped without warning. He purchased an orthopedic back pillow. It didn’t really help. 

            His eyes deteriorated, a result of endless nights spent staring at his brother’s ornate, looping handwriting under nothing but a thin, naked bulb. His optometrist renewed his prescription at least once per year with an admonition to ‘rest your eyes.’ Stan ignored every word, instead finding solace in Ford’s observations. They were real. He could see them, run them under his fingers.

            His knees ached, a tribute to his daily exercise regimen of hauling equipment up and down the stairs to Ford’s secret lab.

            “Of _course_ you’d build a _secret_ lab,” he’d mutter, cursing the walls at his brother’s sheltered, cliched ideas of a scientist’s home.

            “Why do you even _need_ this?” he’d yell every time a piece of machinery accidentally bumped the doorframe or fell to the ground, shattering under his clumsy feet. He picked up the pieces, gluing them together, trying to fit them into the Ford’s massive supercomputer puzzle.

            That one was his favorite – why do you _need_ this?

            Microwave won’t turn on?

            Don’t need it.

            Window won’t open?

            Don’t need it.

            Can’t reach the cupboard?

 _We’re literally the same height, poindexter._  

            Ford’s room?

            Seal it off.

            Don’t need it.

            That was the thing – every single piece of this house, down to the floorboards, had been meticulously built from the ground up. Each nail, wall, and electrical appliance had been a deliberate and calculated purchase made by Ford.

            Every piece of this house was a choice.

            He couldn’t throw anything out. If – _when,_ he reminded himself – _when_ his brother returned, he’d need all of it. Stan stowed things away in the attic, in the closets, in boxes and bags. Even broken parts. When the microwave died, he carefully packaged and stored it. The broken window was meticulously sealed shut. The cupboard, unused, remained in perfect condition.

            Nothing could be parted with.

            Nothing could be forgotten.


End file.
